Struggling for ideas to drive your content marketing initiatives? Having a solid game plan and strategy is the key to success. Look to the publishing industry for inspiration. After all, editorial department compensation comes from advertising and subscription sales. They’ve mastered the art of content marketing and building audiences. So, here are a few winning tips that you can apply to your program that I’ve learned after a decade in media and publishing:
Know Your Audience
Yes, your audience. The first step of your game plan is to think of your customers and potential customers as an audience. It doesn’t stop with them, however. You should also think of any referral partner or “power” partners as a part of your audience. What is your audience interested in? If you know your audience well enough, you probably already have some ideas about what might interest them. If not, talk to your best customers and ask them!
Create a Content Calendar
If you’re going to be a content publisher, you need an editorial or content calendar to keep you on track. The first step is determining your frequency of publication. Will you publish monthly, weekly, daily? Be careful not to overcommit, but be cautious of not publishing frequently enough. You want to continue to engage your audience or they may find their content elsewhere. A good technique is to publish fresh content and then repurpose snippets of the content later to new audiences (social media status updates are great for this technique).
What will be your topics and when are the best dates to publish them? If you decide to move things around or replace a topic with something else, that’s fine. But having proposed dates for topics will help keep you on track and help to focus resources towards important topics.
Consider SEO
Integrating keyword phrases into blog articles can make Google happy, and we’re all about that. Especially when it means you’re expanding your audience, right? So, consider your SEO Strategy when you’re creating your content and integrate keywords and inbound links where appropriate.
Make Readers Eager to Come Back for More
Ideally, you want new audiences to become email subscribers, RSS subscribers or social media followers. Give them a reason by teasing them with what they’ll receive by following you. Also, be sure to include compelling lead generation content in your marketing so you can attract more future customers. After all, that’s the ultimate goal of your content marketing efforts.
